“The Machines Will See You Now” by Anmol Madan

The Machines Will See You Now

Anmol Madan
Johns Hopkins University Press (2026)
ISBN: 978-1421455051
Reviewed by Arlene Weintraub for Reader Views (09/2026)

At a time when politicians and technology bigwigs are loudly debating the safety of artificial intelligence (AI), many consumers are no doubt wondering how this emerging technology is affecting their health care now, and how it will evolve in the future. Enter technology entrepreneur Anmol Madan, who is joining the AI discussion with his new book, The Machines Will See You Now: A Human Roadmap to Autonomous Health Care. Thanks to Madan’s expertise and his accessible writing style, this book is an excellent primer for both health care consumers and professionals working at the intersection of technology and human health.

Madan begins by suggesting that there are four levels of AI in healthcare: no automation, light automation (the current state of health care), high automation and complete automation. The book is built around the prediction that level three, high automation, is on the way. AI will be key to the industry embracing this level of automation, in which health care providers are armed with algorithms that can assess symptoms, make diagnoses, recommend treatments, and prescribe medications, Madan writes. Among his most compelling arguments is that AI has mastered a critical skill for all good doctors: empathy. People visiting doctors are often in pain or stressed, making empathy crucial for building trust, the author argues. “The result is better diagnosis and adherence to treatment, a more pleasant experience, and improved outcomes,” he writes. The first generation of AI chatbots lacked the communication skills to display empathy, but all of that has changed, Madan argues. Today’s chatbots have mastered empathetic behaviors such as asking open-ended questions, validating user responses and changing tone to respond to signs of unhappiness. These newfound abilities are paving the path to highly automated health care.

Madan, who earned his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, comes to this topic with plenty of real-world experience. He is the founder and CEO of RadiantGraph, a company working on an AI platform for health care organizations. Previously he co-founded AI company Ginger and served as its CEO for 7 years, and he worked as chief data scientist of Teladoc Health and Livongo Health. Those experiences inform the viewpoints and recommendations at the heart of The Machines Will See You Now.

Although The Machines Will See You Now is often quite technical, Madan’s conversational style and deft use of real-world examples and analogies make the book highly accessible for laypeople. For example, Madan uses Netflix as an analogy for the potential of AI in delivering personalized health care. Netflix learns what video content individual users like and then uses that data to recommend similar titles. Madan describes how one of his former companies, Livongo, took a similar approach to helping people with diabetes manage the disease. Its AI specialists developed algorithms that could predict what would motivate individual patients to improve their health habits based on how they used Livongo’s digital programs, connected glucose monitors and health coaches. That data informed the development of personalized disease-management programs.

While The Machines Will See You Now is easily digestible for all readers, the last few chapters may be of more interest to technology- and business-minded readers than to consumers. Chapter 7, “Secrets of Great AI Products,” discusses the importance of product managers in health care AI and the need to empower development teams to innovate strategically. Coupled with Madan’s somewhat technical explanation of rich data, this section of the book may be a bit too in-the-weeds for the average health care consumer.

Another slight drawback is that Madan does not fully address the risks of AI until the end of the book, and even then, he steers clear of providing specific suggestions for ensuring AI-driven health care will be safe for patients. He argues that AI should be regulated in ways that ensure clinical diagnoses and treatment recommendations are accurate. “An open question in 2025, however, is who carries the burden of this accuracy,” Madan writes, suggesting that the FDA and industry experts work together to define frameworks for validating and surveilling health care AI products. No doubt AI safety continues to be a hot topic for health care in 2026 and will raise challenges for the industry well into the future.

All in all, The Machines Will See You Now is a timely treatise on the promise of AI in improving world health, presenting a clear-eyed roadmap to realizing the dream of highly automated health care delivery.